No method to this madness!

When a film has two songs in the first 15 minutes of its running time, it is time indeed to wonder what has in store ahead. Featuring Sai Dharam Tej, one of the five heroes who have emerged from the Chiru-Allu family in the past years, ‘Thikka,’ thus, has a wobbly start.

The director, Suneel Reddy seems unsure how to go about with his flick whether to make it an action entertainer or a slapstick comedy movie – till the first half shudders to a stop, over an hour later. By then all that one gets to see is an absolutely uninvolving sequence of events.

Dharam Tej falls in love, gets spurned and loses himself in liquor along with his wastrel pals. The film also severely exposes the acting limits of the hero and tortures the viewers with the horribly overdone capers of veterans like Rajendra Prasad, the favourite star for the father roles of late in Telugu cinema.

Having spread his storyline too thin and too fast with an eventually predictable ending, the director just abandons the film in a way as the post-interval proceedings begin. Obsessed with showing his top role players constantly craving or downing liquor in almost the entire film, Reddy outsources the film to comedians like Saptagiri, Raghu Babu, Thagubothu Ramesh etc who ham atrociously and bog down the pace even further.

Where the director gets his act right is the manner in which he shapes up the heroine’s role, which is absolutely stereotyped and the right fit for the Brazilian beauty, Larissa Bonesi .Dumbed down and hyperactive, Larissa merges into the mindless mayhem that the film turns out by the time its 140- minute running time gets done with.

As a sort of damage control, a series of sequences basing itself on identity confusion between the kidnapped heroine and the hero’s father and a few other misleading characters is attempted to provide a comic relief, as the hero pines for his heroine and is desperate to reunite with her. Even here, as the audience gets sucked in into the goofy antics of the cast, the director stretches it a little too long to reduce the enjoyment levels considerably.

Having had an average grosser and a super hit in the last year, Sai Dharam would have surely wished the success caravan to continue zooming away. But ‘Thikka’ may just be a reality check, a speed breaker of sorts for him to make a course correction.

Film Name : Thikka
Cast : Sai Dharam Tej, Larissa Bonesi, Mannara Chopra and Rajendra Prasad
Direction : Suneel Reddy
Genre : Comedy-action
Likes : Occasional laughter-raising comedy scenes
Dislikes : No clear storyline, muddled narrative